Physical Therapy to offer a Masters

Angela Busch, acting director of the School of Physical Therapy. Photo by Colleen MacPherson

Things are a bit quiet in the School of Physical Therapy without a class of first year students, but there’s a sense of excitement as the school prepares to open its doors to the first group that will receive a Masters of Physical Therapy (MPT) from the University of Saskatchewan.

The school, located in St. Andrew’s College, did not register new students this fall in order to follow a profession-wide move toward masters programs. According to Angela Busch, the school’s acting director, the change is intended to equip graduates to handle “the information explosion, the introduction of new technology and a greater requirement for accountability. The gradual change in the role of physical therapists to more of a primary health care provider has increased the education demands…and led us to look at what we were doing, and what we need to be doing.”

All 13 physical therapy programs in Canada will be converted to masters programs by 2010, said Busch, “so it isn’t just us deciding to do this.” At that time, an MPT will be a requirement for licensure. This change is not without precedence – over time, physical therapy training has moved from a diploma, to a three-year Bachelor of Physical Therapy (BPT), to a two-year prerequisite and three-year Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy (BScPT) program.

Making the switch is “a fairly onerous process,” Busch said. It involves extensive consultation with stakeholders, a complete revision of the curriculum and a new admission standard of a four-year bachelors degree with three requirements – physiology, anatomy and statistics.

In terms of the curriculum, Busch said it has meant removing redundancies, filling gaps and creating emphasis on evidence-based practice which she defined as “incorporating the best evidence from research, clinical experience, expectations of clients and the constraints of resources to determine the best treatment option. The move toward greater autonomy among physical therapists means they have to be trained to be able to work through issues and problem-solve on their own.”

In lieu of a thesis, the MPT program will include a research-based project that will be a course in itself.

The new program will take two years and six weeks, she said, and will run 11 months of the year. The first 40 students will be admitted in the fall of 2007. This is an increase of 10 students over the BScPT program in response to the growing demand for physical therapists, she said.

The budget for reconfiguring the program also includes the addition of two more faculty with PhDs being a requirement for hiring. Instructors will now require at least a masters degree, Busch said, although the school will continue to make use of clinical specialists even if they do not meet this standard. There will be some shifting of teaching responsibilities, she said, but faculty and instructors have been fully supportive of the change.

“We’ve always felt we have an excellent product now…because our faculty is so engaged in teaching. This process is a chance to renew our faculty, build research capacity and bring in new approaches so that in the end, you will have in our graduates a combination of excellence in the clinical care you receive plus very strong critical thinking, problem-solving, evidence-based clinicians.”